I was in Korea two months ago to film a web travel short with Klook Asia, and as it happens, my body betrayed me two days into the trip. I woke up on night zwei, clammy with horror, and I thought, oh boy. If my life were a netflix original this might have been the turning point where our dear protagonist (aka me) had an epiphany on the nuances of transitioning from girlhood to adulthood, etcetera, but.. no. There is no romanticism to being bent double over the cold tiles of a toilet floor, gripping the sides of a bowl and staring at your half-digested ddeokbokki from the night before, I can tell you that.

The following four days I had a fever which stubbornly refused to break, and if you know me, you’ll know how damned affronted I was by this defiance. I fall sick precisely once a year, and then, only for a maximum of forty eight hours at a go. This was my third time this year. Obviously, at twenty five, I have reached Peak Asian, and from here on it is just downhill. How else does one explain this nonsense? Also, as if just for dramatic quality, the daily call time was about 630am, and the shooting itinerary involved 1. paragliding off a freezing mountain, 2. hair tosses atop a speeding open air bus, and 3. ice skating. I adore these things separately, but when they collide with a forty degree fever in fifteen degree weather, well, the only thing you can really do is throw back your head and laugh.

In the photo above I am standing outside the ice skating rink and drinking banana milk, sipping emotional comfort associated with korean childhoods that I consumed in droves from dodgy streaming sites. In all the television shows, korean children drink banana milk, and if you are not a child and are being given banana milk on television, you must be emotionally distressed or crying or something. Invariably characters are happier post-banana-milk, having had absorbed some kind of wisdom from the mysterious banana milk. Later, at 24, when I took Korean classes, the first thing the teacher taught me to say (and the only thing that stuck) was banana milk – pa-na-na-uu-yuu. Commercially, emotionally, and in terms of national pop culture importance, this banana milk is obviously a timeless icon. You can get it for 1,000won in any korean convenience store.

This is to say that I am a sucker for branding and marketing, because I immediately felt better after that banana milk, and I did not throw up that night. A magical recovery it was not, but I definitely experienced a mild uplifting in spirits, I might have even heard the strings of a korean OST play in the background of my mind. There is a scientific term for this – the placebo effect – and I remembered laughing when I thought of it that night, vomit free. I went back for more banana milk the next day, convinced that it was the key to emotional and physical health. I must have had three servings of banana milk the day after. And I thought, this is it, everyone laughs at korean dramas for being unrealistic and fluffy, but here I am, nausea free and happy! It was wonderful. I bought more banana milk. It was a good time, I told myself, to be young and alive.

I should have seen it coming; it surprises me that I did not. It landed me right back on the toilet. I had conveniently forgotten the inconvenient fact that I was mildly lactose intolerant. And so it goes.

You always know it’s going to be a good trip when you check into your airbnb and gasp.

Which was exactly what happened on day one of Melbourne – when our host opened the door and we were greeted by the most sublime living room, opening up to a balcony offering mad views of the city.

“Ooh,” Jenny (our host) said, looking at us. “I do so like it when people love the place.”

And then she gave us a quick house tour (washer and dryer here, here’s how the nespressso machine works, and please water my flowers for me every other day!) and left us to soak in the place. And soak it in we did. In fact – we wanted to move in permanently and live here forever – so intense was our level of affection for the place!!

The pictures of the place actually dont do it justice – nothing quite captures the way the natural light fills the space with a sense of calm, nor the way the french cafe music (Cafe De Paris, Disc 1) floating from her cd player fills you with a sense of deep seated satisfaction. Or the way the cool air rushes at you as you step into the balcony to water the flowers or people watch (the balcony overlooks many nearby rooftop bars). Or the way you’re gently woken each morning by the sunrise peeking in from the strategically positioned bedroom window (you can pull the blinds down if you’d prefer to sleep in).

Waking up to this every morning T-T

The apartment isnt family-home kind of large, it’s more 2-3 adult housemates living together kinda size. And everything in the apartment is geared towards that chic adulting lifestyle – from the thoughtful interior design (the little mirror and drawer by the door for a last minute hair check and to leave things like keys, sunglasses, lipsticks, that you’d need to remember to bring out) to the creation of reading nooks to either read alone or hang with friends before bed. It reminded us so much of our Airbnb in Paris from two years ago, and we couldnt help but swoon over every little detail in the place and surreptitiously take notes for future reference.

Mirror by the main door to do final checks before heading out

Small passageway between the living room and bedroom – with a shelf of books!

Morning coffee run from a street down – Seven Seeds Coffee from Traveller Coffee

Working remotely in the mornings by the kitchen table in the living room

And let’s talk location. Located in the private little alley of Liverpool Street within the busy CBD, the apartment already has the air of being a private find. It was so incredibly central that although it was within the Free Tram Zone, we walked everywhere – the only times we needed to take the public transport was to St Kildas on a different side of town, and also when we booked a Klook tour bus to take us to Yarra Valley.

The fantastic location meant that we could wake at 6 (I started transitioning into a happy morning person in Melbourne, possibly because there is no better way to be woken than by french music and the gentle rays of first light?) and go for a coffee run – Traveller Coffee one street down opens at 7am and serves coffee from Seven Seeds – and then come back and work remotely off my laptop till 11 before heading out again for brunch. Words cannot describe how happy this arrangement made me: I’m a bit of a self confessed workaholic, and I loved, loved the fact that I could wake up early and be productive for a good five hours before going about my day. Already the day is a winner when you start by ticking a whole bunch of things off your to-do list. Five hours means replying all my emails, finishing strategy proposals for a client, drafting two or more blogposts, and mining administrative tasks (making bookings for the coming week, planning out the finer details of my anniversary with Shane – to be the day after I landed back in Singapore). Xiaoqi would often wake a couple of hours later, by which time I would have take out coffee and bagels waiting for her, and we would work across each other on the wide kitchen table before getting ready at 11 to head out to brunch. Twice on the trip we woke early to set our laundry to wash, a sure sign of adulting.

After brunch, we would roam around the city, see things we wanted to see, and then head back to the apartment to work out at about 4-5pm and transfer the laundry from washer to dryer if it were laundry day. Because Xiaoqi is a fitness nut, she actually brought a yoga mat, and so daily we would meander back to the apartment before dinnertime to work out together in the living room, shower, then finish up some work on our computers before heading out for dinner and wine. This arrangement worked because she definitely knew she wanted to exercise everyday (to be fair, if you were in Melbourne, foodie city, you would feel the need to work out daily too) and we knew two things to be true: 1. nobody can work out after wine and 2. we would have wine every night.

And then after a fantastic dinner (we went to amazing places. AMAZING.), we would happily return to the apartment to wind the night down by reading a couple of chapters from our books (i went to town in a small cozy bookstore a mere two minute walk from our apartment, I tell you) either in the living room or in bed – warm bedside lights facilitated this – and then turn in, happy with our day.

All the time I thought to myself THIS IS THE LIFE I WANT TO PERMANENTLY LEAD.

So much about the apartment and it’s location facilitated this. Beyond being an amazing apartment contained in itself, it was also a vessel to achieving that adulting life goals I had always dreamed of. If I lived here, I told myself, I would be the happiest, most productive person ever. To be fair, I’m generally happy in disposition, but I was in a very, very good place in Melbourne – and much of this had to do with my insane love for our airbnb.

Most of our treasured finds from the trip were also stumbled upon mere minutes from our apartment. Let me lay it out for you:

Down the street from Bodega: Chinatown and Little Shanghai – famous for xiaolongbao, a type of chinese soup dumpling, and with perpetual long queues. It opened at 12, which meant living nearby ensured we were FIRST IN LINE. Actually this applied to most places, our location meant a bit of strategic navigation ensured we hardly had to queue for anything. 3 minutes walk from our Airbnb.

Down the main road from Liverpool Street: Princess Theatre, Melbourne, where the Book of Mormon was showing at the time. We were so near that on the first day, after checking in, we could rush down to the theater to inquire after last minute tickets – and we snagged first floor platinum stall tickets originally retailing for about 278AUD according to the counter girl for 50AUD each. For comparison – when I first watched Book of Mormon in London, I paid about 100SGD for the furthest seats from the stage. So this is INCREDIBLE VALUE. Last minute tickets are the way to go man. And what a way to start our trip! 3 minutes walk from our Airbnb.

I could go on. But get the idea?

I have said over and over again that when selecting a good place to stay, factor in location, because if youre paying a bit less to stay somewhere further that you’re going to have to pay more daily for transport, then it only makes sense to top up a bit more for the better experience of staying somewhere you have to pay less (or on our case, nothing at all) for on-trip transport. And this airbnb was the perfect example of that. It only makes it more perfect that the apartment was what it was – gorgeous, chic, our dream adult home. I recommend this place so hard – I know if and when I come back to Melbourne, I’ll be back to stay with Jenny right here.

So I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, but in November, I finally stopped dithering, went out and bought myelf a chromebook.

This came as a surprise to most people – I have a perfectly fine macbook pro (old, but trusty) and I work off a second hand iMac in my office (bought off carousel for $400, can you believe it?). But I wanted something portable and functionable enough that I could use for travel – I’m always on the go, and more often than not I’m out of the country at least once a month. I don’t always need a laptop on these trips, but I do get a bit nervous whenever I dont have it cos I’m afraid something urgent will crop up, so I end up lugging it along out of habit anyway. And half the time, it ends up being deadweight, because I either dont use it, or use it just once on the trip. Of course, a simple solution would just be not to bring anything – but the occasion has popped up more than once where I needed to rush some edits, or do some writing, and I’ve always been glad in those instances to have broguht my MBP with me.

My travel set up is hectic, because I usually have my laptop, DSLR, and an extra lens if I’m headed on a big trip. All things that I obviously will not put in my check in baggage, so I’m always lugging around at least 3kg of electronic weight around with me in my carry-on backpack, in addition to other miscellaneous plane things. I knew I wanted to streamline this because not only is it cumbersome, it’s also not great for my back. And all signs seemed to be pointing to getting a portable work machine that would serve my basic needs while on the go to complement my more fully fleshed out work set up back home.

Ever since my chromebook appeared in my instagram posts, multiple people have written to me asking me to do a review of the chromebook. I’m not a tech expert, so if you want to know the super technical specs stuff, please do your own reserach. But from a user’s experience? Sure. Here we go:

Chromebooks – what?

Chromebooks are basically computers that run on the google chrome OS. It is not a brand, it is a type of device – like a phone, a tablet, or a computer. My particular chromebook is made by HP (it’s the HP Chromebook 11 g5), but you could get one from Lenovo, Acer, Asus, etcetera. Their defining characteristics are usually that they’re cheap, and that they run on the Google OS. Beyond that, each chromebook differs.

Chromebooks – why?

Like I said, I wanted a work machine for travel. I considered getting a tablet, but I quickly realised that Im a traditionalist and I need a keyboard. The tablet + keyboard combo would add up to too much money for my liking, so that was out. My boyfriend pointed out that I could have upgraded my current 4 year old macbookpro to the latest one which is way lighter, and so reduce the number of devices I would need to own in total. But my MBP is chugging along fine, and the new macbooks start at a ridiculous 1,900 to 2,000SGD, which I refuse to pay unless my current MBP dies completely.

That left netbooks and chromebooks. They’re both cheap options – netbooks are tiny laptops that usually run Windows 10, and chromebooks are tiny laptops that run the Google OS. Most retail for 500SGD or under. They’re also smaller and lighter, thus fulfilling the portability requirement for me. I debated for very long between the two, but finally went with the chromebook.

Chromebooks – why I decided to get it and how I decided which model was right for me

My matte black chromebook! You can identify chromebooks by the little google logo at the top corner

What I got was the HP Chromebook 11 G5. I bought it from the HP store at Marina Square Singapore for $449, and it came with a one year warranty, the charging cable, and a free squishy sleeve.

Deciding on this was a matter of sitting down and writing out what I wanted vs what I needed, what I would realistically use it for (which begs the question: what I was willing to compromise on), and what was available to the Singapore market.

What I wanted
Portability (weight)
Portability (size/dimension)
A good keyboard
Good battery life
Touchscreen option
A nice screen?
Something cheap (

All of the above I would have liked, but I know that at $500 which I refused to budge on, compromises would have to be made. So I narrowed it down. Portability was key – weight was more important to me than size, although preferably I hoped to find a sweet spot between the two). I had to have a good keyboard because I would be using it mainly to write. I tried one of those super thin keyboards before and hated it, I need a solid keyboard that’s evenly spaced and with good key travel (kind of like the amount of depression you get when you press the keys). Everything else was just a wish list. So this is what my list of needs looked like after considering the above:

Something light
Good keyboard
Cheap

Everything else I reasoned, would be a bonus, but I wouldn’t die without. And I knew for $500, I couldnt expect something that would blow my mind – but that’s ok. I just needed something that worked for my purposes. Everything else would be fluff and glitter dust.

What I would use it for

Narrowing down that above list of requirements came with truly knowing exactly what I was in the market for. People can get overboard when buying new things, and I’m like that too. I want everything! I want a sexy looking laptop that weighs next to nothing and has three USB ports and an SD card reader and solid wifi connection and a screen that will blow my mind, and preferably this dream laptop costs nothing!!

But that’s unrealistic. To narrow down what you truly need vs what you want, ask yourself what you are using it for. For me, I needed something to 1. Blog on 2. Reply emails 3. Possibly book tickets for things when I’m travelling.

So that’s like, a glorified blogging machine. Ok. If I can watch Netflix on it on the go, great, that’s a bonus. But I don’t need a fantastic screen or something that’s got a hardcore enough processor to edit photos on. I can do that on my phone. I just need something small that I can write on. Ok. Great. That simplified things a lot for me. So if youre thinking of getting one, ask yourself what youre going to be using it for, then work backwards from there!

Working off my Chromebook on my lap on a plane ride. It’s very light, so it balances quite easily.

What was available at my desired price point and for my needs?

For under five hundred bucks, honestly, my options were a B grade tablet, a netbook, or a chromebook.

I needed a keyboard, so a tablet was out.

That left netbooks and chromebooks. I was more inclined towards a chromebook because my girlfriend Kate from New York uses one (they’re pretty rare in SG) and she swears by it, and also because it was new to me and thus exciting. But the netbook seemed safer because the Windows OS is something more familiar, and it has all the things you would traditionally see in a computer – Microsoft office, offline apps, etc. Whereas the chromebook would only run things off Google and the Chrome app store, and its utility was mostly reliant on the availability of a solid internet connection.

So I went on various tech websites to read reviews of specific net vs chromebook models, but it wasnt helpful because the verdict was like, everything had pros and cons and HELLO? Dont tell me that. Just tell me which is better. But nothing gave me that answer. Then I went on tech forums (mostly useless, too much technical jargon) and finally, to reddit. Reddit, the place I go when I wanna hear conspiracy theories about the meaning of the latet Black Mirror episode. But it turned out to be a pretty good thing because the support for chromebooks on various Reddit threads was nearly unanimous.

I realised quickly while browsing threads that I didnt need the windows OS – it was just a more familiar, safe option. Also, windows netbooks tend to be slower, because the hardware developers pay rights to Microsoft to run Windows, so the leftover money invested into the hardware is less. Whereas Google and Chrome is free, so the cost of the chromebook mainly goes towards making a solid book. Then they have profit markups from there.

Lastly, and specific to me: I use a Mac and macbook as my main computers, and I have two phones (work and personal, 2 numbers), one iPhone and one Android. The one thing that would unify everything was the google platform. It seemed unnecessarily complicated to add a Windows OS to the mix, and now I had a solid reason to move most of my work to the cloud. Now, I can edit my documents in Google Drive on any one of my computers, then pick up my phone and add notes if I think of anything extra on the go. It was all about streamlining my workflow, and the Google OS made the most sense for this.

The purchase of most chromebooks will also come with 100GB free Google Drive storage, valid for 2 years. This is really a great bonus!!! It’s obviously to encourage you to store things in the cloud instead of on the device itself, which, yknw, im totally fine with.

Availability in the Singapore market

Chromebooks are not popular in Singapore – I think many people are not willing to move to something that’s so web-based and away from a familar platform, and brands may not think it’s worth it to bring an entire line in? Most great chromebooks arent actually brought to Singapore, and I didnt want to ship something so expensive from the States because I’m paranoid and also cos sorting the warranty out would be a pain. I had my eyes on the Acer R11 and Asus C201, both of which arent available here. So from the existing options I picked the HP. It was between this and an Asus model, but I went to both stores and tried them out several times, and the HP has a truly great keyboard which is crucial for me. It also looks slightly more chic, coming in a nice matte black. So the HP it was!

Chromebooks – My experience so far

I’ve had the chromebook for a week now, and I’ve used it pretty frequently in that time. Obviously, my review might change after six months or one year of use, but here’s my take for now.

The HP Chromebook 11 G5 has a truly, truly amazing keyboard. Typing is so comfortable on this that it is an immediate win for me. And it is so light (just over 1kg) and small (smaller than A4) that I have no problems slipping it in my tote bag when I travel, and sliding it out to pick up work on an existing document on the go. In fact, this blogpost was entirely typed out on a car ride from Pakbara Jetty Terminal to the Hat Yai city center.

Tada

The keyboard is matte, has good key travel, and is decently spaced out so typing for long periods doesn’t cramp your hand.

The battery life is sick. Way better than my Macbook – because it doesnt have to do as many things as my mac, and so it doesnt have all the battery consuming applications of a macbook. The advertised battery life is 12 hours, but I usually get about 8-10 out of it, depending on whether I’m working off the internet or not. Either way, I have never had to bring a charger out with me, as my chromebook lasts and lasts and lasts.

Because of the improvements made by Google to it’s offline drive support, I can create and edit documents offline, which becomes immediately synced to the online server once I connect to wifi. Then when I pick it up again from either my Mac or back again from the chromebook, I just copy-paste the contents to my wordpress composer and finalise the draft before posting it. When I work offline, it just autosaves a draft every five seconds or something, so I’m never worried that my work will be lost halfway.

The offline G drive support wasnt available as recently as 2 years ago, and without it I definitely wouldnt have gotten the chromebook because i want to be able to work offline. The offline capability means I only really need the internet to back it up to the cloud server – before Google added offline functionality, chromebooks were useless without internet. This was also was a good signal to me because it indicates that as long as Google keeps updating and improving its services, my chromebook will benefit from it, be it one or five years from now, as long as the hardware doesnt die on me.

For those of you who still want to use MS Word to craft documents, they do have that available as an application. It’s slightly stripped down from the full desktop version IMHO, but still workable. Google owns Android, and in a recent move, they’ve allowed newer chromebooks to access the Android Play store. This means chromebooks with a touchscreen can play games now.. But it’s not something I need or want to do. I downloaded the apps for MS Word, Netflix, Spotify, Dropbox, and Multi Messenger (a multi platform app that lets you chat with whatsapp, FB messener, and Telegram all within the same tabbed app), and that’s all that I need right now. I’m trying to keep my Chromebook free of things that i dont need, because I want to keep the expereince as straightforward as possible and I am conscious of the fact that too many apps will slow it down. So far, it’s been pretty smooth.

And lastly, my chromebook is so fast. Start up time is almost immediate, it springs into action once I open it, and it hasnt given me any lags so far yet. This is also because I take care not to run too many applications at a go or have like more than 10 tabs open, as I know that might slow it down, but so far user experience has been smooth.

Things that I dont like about the chromebook so far are minor physcial things – my HP chromebook’s keyboard, while amazing for typing, doesnt have a backlight. So if I’m working in the dark, I cant see what I’m typing. But I’m so used to keyboards that I can type without looking at the keys, so thats fine. It’s just a minor inconvenience and also something that’s a bit jarring when you first notice it.

My monitor’s hinge is limited to slightly over 90 degrees, and I would have liked the option to push the screen back a bit more so if I work in some positions it makes the screen more comfortable to look at. But this is something that only comes up when I’m working while in cars/planes, and it’s also solvable by adjusting my seating position.

The trackpad is pretty mediocre, it’s not bad, but after coming from using a macbookpro for almost six years, it sure is a noticeable difference. Still, none of these things bother me in the long run because I just smirk at the fact that the whole computer only cost me 450$ ho ho.

Chromebook relative to human

Chromebooks – Is it right for you?

For those of you who wrote me asking about the chromebook, I know youre scanning through this post thinking so is it a good buy or not!?

Well, that depends ultimately on you. Different people have different needs, and all I can do is give you an honest recount of my experience. I will say that it will never be my primary laptop purely because I need apps like Pages/Word for writing, and when I’m in full on work mode, I have like seven hundred things running at once. But for travel? It’s perfect. The Chromebook makes an excellent secondary laptop, and it’s been a joy so far.

Some of you who wrote to me want to use it as a primary laptop for school. I dont know if I would recommend this because school sometimes requires groupwork and I dont know students these days are ok to work entirely off Hangouts and Google Docs? Again, be sure you know what exactly you want to do with your new computer and if this can be done within the limitations of the chromebook. Heavy video / photo editing and gaming, for example, is a no go. But if youre using this mainly to take notes and do web-based work, I think it’s a pretty good deal.

And if you’re a working professional looking for something light, productive, and power efficient? You won’t be disappointed with a chromebook, I think, not when offline functionality for Google has been so improved and when there’s wifi hotspots nearly everywhere in the city anyway.

The bottom line is, it’s a $450 machine that’s very value for money, does what it’s supposed to do, and this model in particular looks pretty neat while doing so. In other words, yes, Baymax, I am satisfied with my care.

The last two weeks have been pretty much nonstop – since touchdown from Melbourne, I’ve been on nonstop shoots (new cinema ad launching this week guys!!), workshops, meetings (I’m in post-production stage for another film project I’m working on), and the rest of my time has basically been dedicated to working on the edits to my thesis, which is now in amendment phase. My plan to slowly transition into being a morning person has totally and spectacularly failed – the last three 5am workdays unequivocally proved that, with 5am being the time I wrapped my day, not began it. Still, I have found that at twenty five, I can no longer proffer the excuse that I am still figuring shit out because there is no pretending at naivety or kid-like innocence at twenty five (23, 24, is still passable, but 25? that’s borderline embarrassing) and so as a result I have doubled down to MONSTER UP my day and confront challenges with hopefully more finesse and less fluster.

Regardless, that is to say that it has been a very exhausting two weeks. I say this often, I realise, and so I think it is prudent to clarify that I by no means label this a complaint. I love working. I love being tired. Being tired signals to the asian in me that i am doing something right because laziness is a disease, etcetera etcetera. Insert other traditional asian values here. But either way, tired is tired is tired, and so I am always glad for the opportunity to take a short breather in between hustles to just play, which was exactly what I got to do today in the Google Asia HQ’s giant ball pit.

We were there for the Google Pixel2XL’s launch in Singapore, and although I’ve been to the Google office several times before, the installation of this ball pit was new to me. Obviously I jumped in. And I tell you, lying back in that ball pit, homegirl did not want to get up. It was like being on a more colourful, less ergonomic beanbag. I felt myself relax into the pastel and quite literally disappear (I’m not very tall, the ball pit isnt that shallow, do the math). I wanted to sink to the bottom of the ball pit and hide there for a quick nap – a plan which was going quite well till Bex burrowed her way over to me and grabbed my feet. Cue ball fight. I dont care what anyone says, no one is too old for a ball pit fight, and we may have thoroughly embarrassed ourselves to the amusement of the Google crew, but at least our working defence is that we are creatives..?

Anyway. Good times with the click crew, always. We recently celebrated our 10th anniversary (I wanted to blog about that, but haven’t gotten around to it, and the gist is that YES WE ARE TEN!) and I’m so proud to have been part of six of those ten good years. People who can do adulting good but also throw pastel coloured balls at each other and dissolve into giggles shortly after. That is the aesthetic I now aim for, ja genau.

I dont know if you guys can tell, but I’m making a real effort here to document all the amazing meals I had in Melbourne. That’s why when we went to this random salumi bar a minute walk from our Airbnb, I still whipped out my phone to take pictures of everything we ordered despite it not being a place I thought of featuring before first bite. But JEEZ THANK GOODNESS I DID BECAUSE THIS MEAL BLEW OUR MINDS!!!!

I have said over and over and over again that I am addicted to having apps for everything (I have apps that manage my money flow, track my sleep cycles, you name it, you got it), and same goes for my travelling. I rely very, very heavily on Foursquare and Yelp when I travel because I truly believe that location based community sourced recommendations are where its at, and it was also through these apps that we found Ombra Salumi Bar. We had gotten back late from St Kildas, having waited for the penguins to come home, and wanted to get dinner but didn’t know where would be good, still open, and relatively near our place. Ombra popped up and although neither of us were huge fans of salumi, the reviews were so good that we just decided to give it a try.

For the uninitiated, salumi is a kind of cured meat that you eat with bread and crackers and stuff. With cheese too, maybe. We got a platter of two types for $22, and it came with freshly baked bread and olive oil. They bake the bread in-house, fresh daily, the waitress told us, and it showed, because the bread was delicious. I had it with a glass of her recommended 2015 Bardolino Cavalchina, an italian red wine, which was the perfect balance to the saltiness of the salumi. Xiaoqi had a cocktail that was yellow in color and I dont remember anything else about it so never mind.

With her yellow drink. We sat alfresco to dine, though indoors is nice too!

Unfortunately, I dont remember exactly what the two types of salumi we had were because honestly it was such a casual dinner I wasnt expecting to blog about it so I didn’t take notes, but I suspect they change it up regularly so I suppose you can just go in and ask for recommendations if youre in the area! The salumi we had was pretty good, we both raised our eyebrows at each other when we had it, and debated a bit if this was what adulting was like, learning to appreciate food you didn’t really like as kids. Because we were taken by surprise by how much we liked the salumi.

But the show stealer was this insane pizza we ordered. Honestly we just ordered the pizza because we hadnt had italian food for awhile and thought pizza would be a safe backup in case we didn’t like the salumi but IT WAS REALLY LIKE THE BEST PIZZA I EVER HAD IN MY LIFE AND I HAVE BEEN TO ITALY. JEEZ! I am getting very agitated thinking about the pizza. That pizza is the kind of thing that wins awards. I cant believe it was just chilling on the menu, sandwiched in between two other options. Ridiculous. It needs a gold star next to it, a chefs hat icon, a little RECOMMENDED! tick mark, or something.

Us ripping into the pizza

Because I didn’t take notes (ugh, stupid!), I cant remember exactly what the pizza was called, but I can tell you what was on it. It was a thin baked crust with artichoke puree as a base, really superb prosciutto on top, and fresh rocket piled on. The artichoke puree was honestly a stroke of BRILLIANCE. It was so different from the tomato or cheese or white wine base that normally tops pizza dough, and I think I would buy that puree by the TUB to dip crackers and chips in. When you pick a slice of the pizza up, artichoke puree drips off it. I cry, I weep, I die. It was phenomenal. When the waitress came back out, we started gushing compliments about her recommendations; we were that emotional about it. We had had many good meals in Melbourne, but this was the only one where we loved every single thing we ordered – usually there were just one or two stand outs, yada yada. She smiled and backed away slowly. But no matter, we were happy.

Later in the trip, a day after, Xiaoqi and I were walking down the main street in melbourne discussing that pizza we had.

“I still cannot comprehend what we ate,” she said, “i cannot understand how it could logically be so good.”
“It’s like falling in love,” i told her, finally, thinking about it. “You spend your whole life thinking you’re a person of simple tastes and can be satisfied easily, but then you have a bite of really freaking fantastic food, and your heart does a little leap, and you know it’s the one.”
She laughed. “I know exactly the leap youre talking about,” she said, and did a little dance on the streets of Melbourne.

We thought many cheesy things on that trip, many of which were cliche. But we knew two things to be true at the end of it – 1. Melbourne was a series of very happy moments, strung together by quieter, sated tableaus, and 2. That was the best meal we had in melbourne, hands down, no competition. Pizza, at least for me, will never be the same.

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I shoot on the Nikon D750 with a 35f1.8 prime lens unless otherwise stated. Pictures for Instagram are taken either with my camera or with the Samsung Note8.
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